President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has ordered the Ministry of Finance to release with immediate effect six billion shillings for the rehabilitation of roads in the Capital City, Kampala Capital.
Museveni issued the directive on Wednesday while meeting a delegation from Serbia at State House Entebbe to discuss bilateral trade relations between Uganda and Serbia.
“I now direct the Ministry of Finance to urgently release the quarterly contribution to KCCA of 6 billion Shillings for pothole feeling repairs and maintenance of roads. I have been told that only 30 percent of this money has been released in this financial year causing roads outside the ADB project to fall into bad disrepair with attendant problems with traffic jams,” said Museveni.
He also directed that the KCCA Executive Director gives the general public an account on progress om this matter. The 41 roads under the African Development Bank City Project roads will continue for the next four years to improve the City transport.
Museveni’s directive follows a public outcry that led to an online protest against the sorrow state of road in Kampala. Ugandans led by Dr. Spire Ssentongo, a cartoonist and lecturer of Philosophy at Makerere University Kampala held an online exhibition of the potholes in Kampala.
During the exhibition held on Monday, Ugandans posted on twitter pictures of different potholes in their respective localities around Kampala. The exhibition was intended to expose the dire situation in which the roads are in and prompt the City Authorities and government at large to take action.
Following the exhibition, the City Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago came out to say that KCCA was financially constrained to the extent that suppliers of fuel to engineering trucks and suppliers of Asphalt were holding supplies to KCCA due to non payment.
The City Executive Director Dorothy Kisaka also issued a statement noting that despite the need to maintain city roads being 75 to 100 billion shillings annually, the authority only gets about 26 billion shillings from the Uganda Road Fund to perform the task. Kisaka says they are engaging the relevant government agencies to see that the matter is rectified.
” We have met the parliamentary committee to raise awareness of the problems of -dead roads- for lack of better words, otherwise, we mean roads that have outlived their useful lives,” said Kisaka in a statement issued on Tuesday, adding that in this quarter of the financial years, KCCA shall use part of the released funds to fix sections that fit within the provided budget.
Kampala has a total of 2100km of road network but only 30 percent is tarmac or paved and yet much of it also in bad state. According to KCCA, by December 2022, they had recorded an area of 8,500 square meters of potholes spread across the five divisions of the City.
The president hence asked the Ministry to release the Money for road maintenance as the ADF project continues. Kisaka however reiterated that KCCA has started to implement construction works for the close to 70 km of roads funded using the 288billion dollars from the African Development Bank-ADB.